St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1887-03-04
A CIR EClAN BALL.
An American Girl Who Danced will,
Prince.
New Orleans Picayune.

New Orleans Picayune.
An American girl Miss Mary Fearn,
daughter of Walker Fearn, the American
minister to Greece) writes to one of her
New Orleans friends as follows concerning
royal ball: The gentlemen were all made
to stand on one side of the room, the ladies
on the other-quite like Quaker meeting.
A broad passage was thus formed, down
which the king and queen, the prince and
princess. and members of the court passed,
bowling to right and left The queen was
magnificent in white satin. brocaded in
silver, trimmed with white loses and a dia-
mond fringe. Her whole bodice was COW
cred with sapphires surrounded with dia-
monds, and her head and neck a blaze OF
jewels. The royal circle, as it is called,
was then formed in one corner of the room,
where the royal family dance the quadrlles
and sit during the cotillion.
The king gave the signal. and then dane
ing began. One very amusing feature was
the manner in which the round dances were
begun. When the first bars of the waltz
were played an aid-de-camp stood in the
middle of the floor and called to the people
to make circle, on the edge of which stood
the couples about to dance, each dancer
grasping his partner firmly by the waist,
and preparing at the earliest possible mo-
ment to plunge into the maddening rush Of
the deuX-tempS. which is danced here en-
clusively, and which is. perhaps, a t1lfe
less rapid than the galOp. The queen gave
the signal and started round the circle with
her partner; then the princess; after her the
crown prince, and then all the other couples
followed one right after the other around
and around. never turning to the left but ON
and one, faster and faster, each couple evil
IDENTIFY entertaining but one notion-the one
which characteriZeS that exciting sport of o
slide on the ice, when there is only burning
anxiety lest you should swallow up the man
ahead of YOU, or in turn be swallowed up by
the man behind you, The deuX-temps is
certainly great fun, but it requires
no small amount of agility, and eX-
hausts great deal of breath. You
must be prepared to hop blithely over the
PROSTATE couple who may have happened to
fall ahead of you, or, if such calamity
should happen to yourself, to ''lie low"
while the on-coming couple clear you as
they would a hurdle. At the palace ball
there were not many round dances, for the
cotillon, which is the feature Of the evening,
begins early and lasts three hours. In be-
tween times supper is served. have for
gotten to say that the king dances the square
dances with the wives of the foreign minis
tiers. the queen with the kings aids-de-
camp, and the prince with the young Greek
girls.
This is the usual etiquette. You may i'm
agine my amazement when the prince
walked across to me and said: 81 have
been looking for you; want you to dance
the cotillon with me-" He had already sent
word to me to dance opposite him in the
quadrlle. and / certainly did not expect
I "
at the compliment. first on my own ac-
count, and secondly because there were
many Americans present who seemed to
take national pride in Americas being
the first in the field" as Mark Twain has
Observed